Preparing Nurse Leaders to Innovate: Iowa's Innovation Seminar

Currently, no doctoral guidelines to teach innovation exist. Using Christensen's theory of disruptive innovation, the five discovery skills used by disruptive innovators provide the framework for designing a leadership development approach to enable and support a mindset to innovate.

Executive leadership students were provided with didactic content on innovation, were assigned to non-healthcare settings for an anthropological dig to uncover innovative activities, and were provided with reflective prompts to enable a new context for innovation. Faculty collaborated with other fields and took risks to provide new contexts to innovate.

Students identified and proposed innovations for current health care issues. Some of the innovations included processes, evaluation methods, data analytics for care design, and patient engagement solutions.

Faculty crossed borders for field experiences, as well as disciplinary borders. This collaborative seminar demonstrated that it is possible to develop executive nurse leaders to innovate.